grammaticize

English

Etymology

grammatic +‎ -ize

Verb

grammaticize (third-person singular simple present grammaticizes, present participle grammaticizing, simple past and past participle grammaticized)

1. Synonym of grammaticalize (“to make grammatical”).
   • a. 1662 (date written), Thomas Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, London: […] J[ohn] G[rismond,] W[illiam] L[eybourne] and W[illiam] G[odbid], published 1662, →OCLC:

     the very first attempt to embody, to arrange, or to grammaticize, this language

2. Synonym of grammaticalize (“to to cause (something) to be required by the rules of grammar”).
   • 2008, Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 56:

     ... organization (hence its heavy reliance on passives), but does not seem to grammaticize any person-based constraint. In languages with canonical inverse constructions (say Algonquian languages), the non-local person-based constraint is the primary determinant of argument encoding, and ordinary notion of topicality (which is local) plays little role.

   • 2008, Peter Robinson, Nick C. Ellis, Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition, Routledge, →ISBN:

     Languages differ in the extent to which they grammaticize forms within this constrained inventory of conceptual domains and individual concepts, and this inventory, Talmy argues, amounts to the fundamental conceptual structuring system […]

3. Synonym of grammaticalize (“to cause to undergo grammaticization/grammaticalization”).
   • 1994, William Pagliuca, Perspectives on Grammaticalization, John Benjamins Publishing, →ISBN, page 247:

     Or to put it another way, the present tense use did not grammaticize. I suggest that the reason for this is that the habitual was more frequently used in the past than the present, since in the present there would be fewer cases […]

   • 1996, Chicago Linguistic Society. Meeting, Proceedings from the Main Session of the Chicago Linguistic Society's ... Meeting, →ISBN:

     Clause initial position is a frequent place for anaphoric elements and markers of textual coherence to grammaticize. The grammaticalization of a QP from a disjunction with anaphoric function fits well into this picture.

   • 2006, Joan Bybee, Frequency of Use and the Organization of Language, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 342:

     Thus it appears that one avenue by which cunnan begins to grammaticize as an auxiliary is determined by the fact that it was already frequent and had already undergone some weakening of its semantic content.

Further reading

• “grammaticize”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.